Good News is Hard to Find

When I decided to participate in the blogger's action day on Climate Change, I knew I was not going to post a litany of scary statistics. I've read all those things and it hasn't made me hopeful or optimistic. Instead, I wanted to ferret out and post some good news, news about how the world may be adapting and how people are coming up with good ideas.

Good news is hard to find. I've looked for about seven hours, total, and come up with only three articles which I think are hopeful enough to include. There are others that have a hopeful sounding headline but which when you read them, are actually gloomy as hell. For example, the headline "Global Warming expands Trees Range" would seem to be good news. But in fact, the article went on to detail the results of studies on whether or not trees can grow at higher latitudes/altitudes due to temperature changes. The widespread assumption was that yes, they uniformly would. Turns out, not so much. Only half of the sites examined showed any evidence of saplings growing in previously inhospitable areas. In a few areas, treelines had retreated.

This brings me to another thing. One of the things I hear a lot from skeptics is that global warming - if it's even happening - is good because plants can use more CO2 as fertilizer and will increase their growth rate. Well, that's true up to a point - and the point isn't very far away. First year Ecology, people. Ecology 101. Growth is limited by that necessary factor in the environment which is present in the LEAST amount. In other words, jack up the carbon dioxide all you like, but your hours of daily sunlight ain't gonna change. Or your soil quality. Or your WATER. There are a lot of marginally productive areas which are rapidly losing their margin due to desertification.

Okay. I did find one tiny scrap of halfway decent news today. If you can call it that.

Climate: good news at last

Nic Fleming, contributor

Those depressed by the seemingly relentless combination of economic and environmental gloom in recent months have something to be cheerful about.

In the first major study of the effect of the recession on climate change, theInternational Energy Agency (IEA), which advises its 28 member countries on policy, is predicting a drop in carbon dioxide emissions of around 2.6 per cent in 2009 - the largest in 40 years.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the fall in production of the most abundant human-made greenhouse gas was largely down to declining industrial output, and other economic factors such as the shelving of plans for new coal-fired power stations.

The news comes as about 100 world leaders meet at United Nations headquarters in New York today for a one-day summit. The unprecedented gathering - the highest-level meeting on climate change ever held - is an effort to invigorate negotiations in the run-up to the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, when nations will be asked to agree on a new deal to tackle climate change.

So far, international negotiations have been slowed by national interests. Efforts to break the deadlock could be given added momentum by the IEA's estimate that a quarter of the emissions reduction expected to be achieved this year will be as a result of government action.

According to an excerpt of the IEA's annual World Energy Outlook, due to be published on 6 October, Europe's target of cutting emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, US car emission standards and China's energy-efficiency policies have had the greatest effect.

Speaking to Reuters, Fatih Birol, the agency's chief economist, said: "This fall in emissions and in investment in fossil fuels will only have meaning with agreement in Copenhagen which provides a low-carbon signal to investors."

Meanwhile The Guardian reported that the aviation industry will pledge to halve CO₂ emissions by 2050 in an announcement to be unveiled to the world leaders meeting in New York today.